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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27726944">Mommy Dearest</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar'>oonaseckar</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Coming Out, Gen, Homophobia, M/M, Oedipal Issues, Period-Typical Homophobia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:34:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,835</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27726944</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Not every gay man is a spoilt mamma's darling.  And sometimes there's good reason for that.  Charles doesn't know the reason, but his mother does, alright.  He was a Blitz baby when Sharon spent the war in London.  And now he's a 1960s wild child, but homosexuality is still barely legal.  That's the least of his problems, though.  And his mother's...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Armando Muñoz/Charles Xavier, Charles Xavier &amp; Sharon Xavier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My neglected orig-fic into fanfic, ta-da and hey presto.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Charles knew he hadn't really warned Armando properly, taking him home for the first time.  But how did one explain a woman like his mother?  It involved so much more than the usual, pedestrian difficulties of taking a boyfriend home for the first time. (Simultaneous with making the 'Mother dear, I'm homosexual! Drinkies?' speech.  He was looking forward to that.)</p><p>It was easier just to... let it happen.  To roll, in his nice little Mini Cooper, through the rougher, more industrialized parts of the state.  And not to stop.  To just keep going, until they were in actually quite nice suburbs.  And then nicer still, and then frankly upscale.  He could feel Armando getting restive beside him, puzzled and restless.  But Armando didn't ask, so Charles didn't explain.</p><p>He just played the radio loud, and commented on the view, aggressively not noticing anything odd or wrong.  And then there they were, at the gates of dear Mommy's Westchester mansion.  Charles bashed on the intercom, and announced himself with brutal minimalism.  The gardener buzzed him in, and <em>there they were.  </em>Yes indeed.</p><p>“Charles,” his mother said, once they were parked up on the gravel driveway, and the housekeeper had let him in the big front entrance.  (With an attempt at a warm welcome, but she'd only been there for six years.  And anyway he associated all the servants with his mother.  He was brusque, and she quickly gave up the attempt.)</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His mother was coming down the stairs in the entrance hall as she spoke –- a proper plaza hotel affair, sweeping down in a curve.  It was the kind of staircase designed for a movie star with a trailing dress, making an entrance for the paparazzi.  Charles had seen the photos, and his mother had in fact once been movie-star drop-dead gorgeous.  It was odd to think of, now she was tightly permed and blue-rinsed, with a tight cold cautious face.</p><p>Although, to be fair, today he could discern emotion of some kind on her face –- a wildness to the eyes, a bit of a flush.  Perhaps it wasn't surprising.  She was quite recently widowed, after all.  What other reason would he have to bother visiting?  He hadn't gone to his stepfather's funeral –- God forbid.  And yet he hadn't quite been able to prevent himself from responding, when his mother had written a terse letter afterwards, demanding his presence at an appointed day and time, to 'discuss matters'.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Money, he supposed.  It had to be about the money, and the paperwork involved with the old bastard's fortunate demise.</p><p>“Thank you for coming, dear,” she said, reaching the final step.  She leaned a little forward, so that he could kiss her cheek.  And God knew why he went along with it, but he did.  Well trained, like one of her blasted little lapdogs, he supposed.</p><p>“Mother,” he said, because it was the bare minimum he could get away with.  Then he nodded back at Armando, standing awkwardly barely in the entrance, holding his suitcases and Charles' too.  “This is my boyfriend, Armando.  Come on in, Armando.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It did give her a moment's pause.  You could see it –- how she froze like a statue for just a moment, before regaining her composure.  It wasn't as if Charles had done it in <em>hopes</em> of giving her a heart attack.  But it was slightly disappointing, just how quickly she did recover.  Small point in covering up his predilections all these years, if that was the most reaction he was going to get.</p><p>Although beastly old Kurt would probably have beaten the shit out of him, if he'd ever let slip about it –- had hated <em>queers</em> and <em>fags</em> and <em>dykes</em> with a passion, and used each slur with relish.  So, on balance, good call.</p><p>“I see, dear,” she said calmly.  “I though you'd hired a valet, perhaps.  Well, Armando.  How nice to meet you.  Won't you come and have a cup of tea in the drawing room?  Leave the bags for Forbes, he'll put them in your rooms.”</p><p>And there, <em>there</em>, she'd done it.  Disarmed him neatly, taken his foil and turned it around on him, drawn blood.  The right old bitch.</p><p>Not that it seemed to disturb Armando, much.  He dumped the suitcases gladly, and sailed past Charles, following on behind the twinset and pearls on legs.  “Don't mind if I do, lady,” he said, cheerful.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Of course, she was probably just faking the <em>sang froid</em>, Charles thought more cheerfully, bringing up the rear.  It was probably <em>killing</em> her on the inside – no little brats to carry on the family name, and what would the county set think of la Widow Xavier and her queer son, boyfriend in tow?</p><p>Except that, once she'd shooed them like a flock of chickens to the correct chairs in the drawing room, and poured lapsang souchong into bone china, she seemed–-.  Well.  She seemed –- different.  She seemed interested, for a start.  When had she ever been interested?  When had she ever given damn <em>one</em>, about Charles?  His life, the miseries of boarding school, the bust-up over his dissertation at Oxford?  Getting fired from his first job at that commercial lab, after the married-man lab director turned out to be a handsy closet-case?</p><p>(Well, he hadn't told her most of the latter half, to be fair.  He'd learnt better, by then.)</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Not that she was focusing on Charles, himself, so much.  No, it was Armando she was chatting with –- well, chatting <em>at</em>, really.  But she was <em>trying</em>.  It was bizarre. First,  “Tell me, Armando, what do your parents do?”  “Oh, a tobacconist?  And they immigrated from Jamaica?  How enterprising!”  And, “Well, Charles studied genetics at college, you know.  What was <em>your</em> subject, dear?”  And, “Oh, really?  Graphic design?  How interesting!  Do tell me all about it!”</p><p>She should have been spitting something about 'disgusting queers' at the pair of them.  Surely?  Before getting Forbes to escort them out the back entrance, frigidly turning away to avoid one last glimpse of her only perverted child.</p><p>Charles couldn't understand it.  And Armando clearly didn't see anything wrong with it, was playing along happily.  Charles felt himself getting flushed, his breathing was too fast and then too slow, his collar was choking him.  And finally he couldn't tolerate it any longer.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He didn't actually stand up and overturn the coffee-table, before storming out.  He did stand up and just <em>loom</em> there, though -- as far as his height allowed him -- breathing heavily, sweating a bit.  “Is anything the matter, Charles?” his mother asked.  Her tone was mild.  It was the most interest she'd expressed in his well-being since –- well, since ever, maybe.  What the hell?</p><p>He looked from one to the other of them.  All that Armando's face seemed to say was 'what the hell?', too.  Via silent partner shorthand, of course.  But he was still calm.  Armando always maintained  his calm.  Charles would only get raked over the coals for this <em>after</em>.  It wouldn't matter that Charles had cussed her out to him a thousand times, or that he'd just met her.  Armando did not favor disrespecting mothers.</p><p>“Are we actually gong to talk about anything, then?  <em>Mum</em>,” he added, with bitter emphasis.  “Kurt dying?  Paperwork?  Money?  Anything?  Anything real?”  He stared at the woman who'd birthed him, and she might as well have put a mask on over her real features.  He couldn't tell a damn thing: what she thought, what she felt, any more than he'd ever been able to.</p><p>“I'm going to go have a look at my bedroom,” he said, abrupt.  “If you feel like actually getting down to business, let me know.”  And he turned around, and that was the bit where he stormed out of the room.  Not before he'd turned, and added in Armando's direction, “All that county bit?  Posh, you think?  Her mother was Greek Cypriot, her dad was Jewish from Estonia.  Married up, didn't you, Mum?  <em>Twice</em>,” he said.  Bitterly, probably.  Except he was so used to the feeling that he couldn't recognize it anymore, like a fish in water.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took longer than he'd thought, for anyone to come for him.  Not that he'd expected her to come <em>herself</em>.  But Armando, he thought it not unreasonable to think that Armando might care enough to chase after him, a bit.  Or that perhaps she'd send Forbes, or one of the maids, any one of them as much a blue-blood as she was herself.  Which was as much as to say, not at all, barring on the surface of things.</p><p>And it was Armando who appeared first, true.  Behind Charles, where he was standing in the middle of his old room, which had not changed at all in years.  They kept it exactly the same –- kept everything exactly the same, nothing ever changed here.  But it was out of a deep-set conservatism, not any trace of sentiment.  He wasn't too daft to know that.</p><p>Everything, everything about it was as gray and flat and cold as it had ever been, all through a miserable childhood.  And the same chill of creeping fear getting into everything, even with his stepfather dead and gone, the old tyrant.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. photographic memory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Armando wasn't even looking at him, just standing in the middle of the room, gazing down at a bit of paper.  In his beige slacks and Fred Perry shirt, he couldn't have been more out of place, but it warmed the room to have him there.  “Weren't you adorable?” he asked, the faint trace of a West Indian accent barely discernible, paved over with the influence of years of the Jersey shore.  And he handed the paper to Charles, smiling faintly.</p><p>It was a photo, of a small boy perhaps two years old, three at most.  It wasn't anything Charles had ever seen before.  The kid was wide-eyed, had a cheeky expression, with a hand-knitted pullover and some gunk from the cookie he was holding on his face.  Yes, cute, certainly.  There was something familiar about him...</p><p>"Who is it?” he asked, feeling disturbed.  Armando laughed.</p><p>“Who do you think?” he asked.  “Me and your Mom, we've been looking at the family photo album.  I think she wants to talk to you about it.  Give her a break.  Let her talk in her own time.”  He bent and kissed Charles' cheek, a casual salute, then turned to leave the room.</p><p>Charles' mother replaced him, slipping though the doorway simultaneously so they had to squeeze a little to make way for each other.  And Charles saw, that his mother touched Armando's hand lightly, as he exited.  How odd.  How unlike her.</p><p>It was probably more fair to say that he'd always <em>suspected</em> her of being a racist old bint, rather than having much in the way of solid proof.  But even then, her emotional frigidity made it, yes, odd.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. heart to heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And that left the two of them in his old room, Charles and his mother.  What <em>fun</em>.  His mother sat down on his old bed, rigidly made-up army style.  Charles was willing to bet that she had the maids rip the bedding off and re-make it daily, without anyone here to use it.</p><p>Looking up at him, she patted the space next to her.  “Come and sit with me, dear.”  Oh, hell.  He did as she asked, though.  Like a trained seal, and it was hard to get out of the habit.  It had always been easier to comply, rather than risk a thrashing from monstrous old Kurt.  Who would think that he was a free man, now, a free, queer man, a man who could wave goodbye to the past...</p><p>She was talking, though.  And reaching out her hand, for the photo.  “Isn't it a lovely photo, dear?” she asked.  And examined it, as carefully as if it were an old bit of parchment, engraved with Holy Writ.  “You were such a lovely baby.  I can't begin to describe how lovely.  All the other young mothers were so jealous –- oh, I daresay they wouldn't have admitted it, but none of their little ones could hold a candle to you.  So handsome, and clever, and a real charmer too!”</p><p>Charles stared at his mother, now.  It was uncomfortable to be up so close to her, to see the powder caked over her still-fine complexion, the tremble of her lipsticked-lip.  Who was this – this <em>actual person</em>, who'd impersonated the frigid statue of his mother?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. reversal, upheaval</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And when in the heck had his dear old ma ever got maudlin, reminiscing about his adorable little toddler stage?  Never, that was when.  Never, <em>ever</em>, uhuh no no.</p><p>It was... oh, and now she was patting his hand.  Okay.  Charles was frozen, sitting by her on the bed, too frozen not to allow it.  If she cried then he didn't know what the hell he was going to do.  His mother <em>never</em> cried.  Looking at her, it didn't seem beyond the bounds of possibility.  Everything was pretty damned unlikely already.</p><p>She sniffed, delicately, taking out a frosted perfection of a clean handkerchief.  “Anyway.  I didn't really ask you to come today to talk about <em>money</em>, darling.  I <em>am</em> a little curious about why you yourself came, in response to my request.  I know it wasn't for the sake of the money.  What's mine is yours: I would never withhold your inheritance.”  She was gazing at the art on the walls of his room: godawful little 1920s and 1930s oil paintings of ships and soldiers and bloody war, rigidly representational.  Designed to make a man of him, no doubt.</p><p>“I came to tell you I was queer,” he said, baldly.  'Don't I always do as I'm told?' would have been more accurate.  But if he didn't provoke some normal level of coldness and outrage in her, then he hardly knew how he was going to cope.  If she cried on his shoulder...  Maybe she'd actually <em>loved</em> Kurt, the right old pig.  It was unimaginable, but maybe so.  Possibly she was having some kind of a breakdown, as a result of being widowed.  Maybe it was the social stigma of it.</p><p>“Oh, my dear,” his mother only said, patting at her eyes with the hanky.  “As if I didn't know <em>that</em> already.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Ancient History, Greece and Rome</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Bloody hell,” Charles said faintly.  And he felt his mother laugh, very slightly, beside him.  Her little hand was still on his, very warm, not letting go.</p><p>It would probably have been useful, to know that earlier in life.  Would have taken some of the pressure off.</p><p>And her hand was gripping his tighter, now, and any trace of a smile was wiped off her face.  But still she stared ahead, as if she were seeing things that weren't there.  “Do you remember your Daddy, at all, darling?” she asked.  Just as if that was a normal mode of address, for her, to him.  Just as if she ever talked about his real Dad, at all.</p><p>“No,” Charles said flatly.  It was true.  Oh, perhaps some vague, shadowy images, the sensation of being lifted up in strong arms, of laughing.  There wasn't much more than that.</p><p>“I suppose not,” she said, reflectively.  “You were very young, when he was killed.”  And now she shifted on the bedspread, turned to face him.  “It was wartime, and we were in danger every moment, and there was so much else to think about...  I never even managed to get a photograph taken, with the two of you together.”  She looked down at the little photo, twisted in her hand.</p><p>“I've never seen that one, of me,” Charles said abruptly.  “I didn't know...  You've never shown me it.”</p><p>“No, darling,” she said, in a quiet little voice.  “I hid it away.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Truth, At Last</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And Charles was going to ask why, of course.  It was a natural question.  But his mother trembled, seemed to shake herself a little, and spoke before he could get a word in.  “You know that your daddy and your stepfather were in the RAF.  The same squadron – they were friends,” she added.</p><p>“Yes,” he said.  Light was ebbing in the little room, the afternoon fading.  He wondered what Armando was up to, in the huge tacky new-build mansion.  Probably wandering around chatting up the housekeeper, and scoffing scones in the massive kitchen.  He was an alleycat of a fellow, always falling on his feet.</p><p>He wondered what he was doing here, and what his mother might throw at him next.  He would have loosed his hand if he could, but his mother had it gripped too tightly.  “I can't imagine them – being friends,” he added, with an embarrassed and meaningless little nod.  Again, it would have been more accurate to say that he'd always thought less of his dead real father, because of the family legend of the great friendship, David and Jonathan, between him and Charles' stepfather.</p><p>“No,” his mother said.  “Nor can I, in retrospect.  But your father wasn't terribly bright.  The sweetest, loveliest man in the world, but not a champion thinker.”</p>
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